NEW footage from inside the "Mouth of Hell" crater in Siberia shows the dramatic speed of thawing permafrost which had been frozen for thousands of years.

A “disturbing melody” of water gushing from the exposed tundra soil highlights the dramatic impact of climate change in Arctic Russia.

The Batagaika or Batagai "megaslump" is a tadpole-shaped depression around one kilometre long and 2,700 feet wide, and it grows by around 100 feet a year due to permafrost thawing in recent unusually warm summers.

Locals in the remote Yakutia region see this spectacular crater as superstitious, and know it as the "gateway to the underworld".

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Footage from inside the ‘Mouth of Hell’ crater in Siberia shows the speed of thawing permafrost

In fact, this gash in the tundra was caused by the Soviets, who cleared forest here, but it is now being enlarged and shaped by climate change, according to local scientists.

We must understand looking at this slump is that its growth is not something we, humans, can stop

Sergey Fyodorov - Institute of Applied Ecology researcher

This footage was filmed last August and "shows water frozen in the soil for tens of thousands of years trickle and gush away, released from its ancient clasp," according to The Siberian Times.

Chunks of thawing permafrost fall off the cliffs, up to 330 feet high, causing a booming sound which adds to the fears of nomadic groups in this icy outpost.

Sergey Fyodorov, a researcher at the Institute of Applied Ecology, Yakutsk, said: "One of the most serious things we must understand looking at this slump is that its growth is not something we, humans, can stop.

SIBERIAN TIMES

Locals know the spectacular crater as the ‘gateway to the underworld’

"We cannot put a curtain against sun rays to stop it from thawing.

"Even at the beginning of September, when air temperatures drop to zero, you see springs and rivers of water.

"As you stand inside the slump on soft piles of soil that was left after ice thawed, you hear it 'talking to you', with the cracking sound of ice and a non-stop monotonous gurgling of little springs and rivers of water."

He warned that such a phenomenon could occur under a settlement, causing devastation.

"It is good this happened in a remote area away from a settlement where people live," he said.

"Imagine if there was a village or a city above what is now an ever-deepening depression?"

He warned: "It's time for the world to wake up and pay more attention to what is happening (with thawing permafrost) here in Yakutia."

SIBERIAN TIMES

'We cannot put a curtain against sun rays to stop it from thawing', says Sergey Fyodorov

The crater, which lies 400 miles north of Yakutsk, regional capital of diamond rich Yakutia, also known as the Sakha Republic, the largest constituent of the Russian Federation, is officially classed as a thermokarst depression which originally started to form half a century ago.

The director of the Research Institute of Applied Ecology of the North, Gregory Savvinov, said: "In the 1960s, there was a road between the village of Batavia and some industrial facilities.

"The forest was cut down, and this led to the formation of the ravine.

"In recent years, against the backdrop of climatic changes, due to the warming, the ravine grew to the size of a crater."

SIBERIAN TIMES

The crater, which lies 400 miles north of Yakutsk, regional capital of diamond rich Yakutia

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